Renascence Ch. 01

It was snowing today. I was bundled up for the cold, but I wasn't sure if I'd really done it right. After a lifetime under the Californian sun, it was something I still hadn't mastered. How many layers are too much? How many are too little?

The school lot was almost empty, save for two or three cars. They were all parked as close to the front doors as possible. It was supposed to be winter break now for all the good students. The lazy, stupid kids would all be here soon, ready for the winter session to make up the credits to graduate. It was a new program that the school had started, reserved now only for seniors and juniors. It was implemented to help more of us graduate, something about breaking the stigma of small towns producing worthless rejects into society or something. All bullshit to me. They didn't really care if we graduated. They just wanted better funding from the state.

I parked the truck and fumbled in the glove compartment for my cigarettes. Before I got to this piece of shit high school I had thought that smokers were gross.

I blew a thick ring of smoke. I am gross, but this place is too fucking unbearable without something to take the edge off.

The kids from my class were starting to pile in, shivering as they ran from their warm cars to the school. I waited for Mrs. White's silver Prius. Two cigarettes later, I started to wonder whether she would even show.

I checked my watch. It was ten past eight. If she wasn't in there by now my classmates would have left. I checked around me. All their cars were still there.

Maybe Mrs. White's husband had dropped her off or something?

I spritzed myself with perfume, popped in a breath mint and stumbled out of the truck, sprinting to keep warm. God, please let her excuse me for being tardy. I hated the thought of her stern eyes staring daggers into me.

It was dead silent when I entered the class. No one even looked up.

Well, no one except for Miranda.

"You're late, loser," she mouthed. I made a very rude gesture with my hand that would have scandalized my grandmother.

"Complete Assignments 1-4 in Workbook 1" the whiteboard read.

I grabbed a thick workbook from the front of the room and plopped down on a seat in the very back. A shadow fell over me as I turned the first page. My heart stopped. It was the shadow of a tall man.

"I'm just going to assume you got lost on the way here," said a low, deep voice. He sounded just as alluring as I remembered.

Was he a fucking teacher?!

I looked up, floored again by the sheer sight of him. Wearing black slacks, a crisp white shirt and a thin gray tie, he looked professional enough, but he had a kind of boyish quality about him. He looked too young to be a teacher, but too old to be a student. It might have been that hair, dark brown and freshly dampened by the snow, gleaming underneath the fluorescent lighting. It was in casual disarray, a little out of place, but suspiciously styled in a way that hinted that it had been intentional.

I thought he was adorable.

"I'm sorry I'm late," I said breathily.

"Catch up with the class and I'll let it slide," he said, and as he left, his hands slipped into the pockets of his dark slacks. I had a vision of the night before, of his hands trailing over my body, touching me in places that hadn't been touched by anyone in a long time.

His black leather shoes hardly made any noise as he walked away. The vision was gone almost as suddenly as it had come.

The assignments were too easy. Even though I was late, I finished before everyone else. What I wanted to do was sleep because I was always tired, but I didn't dare. I'd already started off on the wrong foot today. I pulled out my purple journal instead, something I wrote in when I needed to get my emotions out. I hadn't written anything in it for a while because lately, all I've felt is numb.

After everyone had completed their work and began chatting amongst each other, Miranda shot her hand up. An awful feeling crept over me. She was going to kiss this teacher's ass and he was probably going to like it.

Miranda did not wait for him to address her. "Mrs. White was admitted into the hospital last night because of some complications she had. My dad is a surgeon at the hospital there."

It wasn't even a fucking question. Wasn't that a HIPAA violation or something?

I watched him, the mystery man, perched on the edge of the teacher's desk with his arms folded over his hard chest. He was really more lean than muscular, with a trim waist and impossibly long legs. He had the kind of body that would have made a potato sack look like a million bucks.

I tore my gaze away. I didn't want to get caught checking him out.

"I know. That's why I'm here," he said simply. In my head I imagined that he was saying it a lot more coolly, putting Miranda in her place. But in reality, he seemed indifferent.

He walked to the whiteboard, picked out a black marker and wrote in big letters: Gabriel Hart

"You can call me Mr. H or Mr. Hart. I prefer Gabe. Just don't —"

He drew a big heart on the board. "Don't draw one of these next to my name when you hand in your work. I'll do something equally hilarious. I'll draw one of these back."

He picked up a red marker and drew a large F.

Everyone laughed, but I was the only one to snort. My heart stopped when his eye briefly caught mine.

He was grinning, flashing a brilliant set of teeth that had probably been perfected by years of braces in the past. I tried to imagine him as a teenager, but it was hard. He already kind of looked like one.

"I'm sure you guys already went through introductions yesterday so I'm not going to make you live through that again. I'll call you one by one to the back of the room to get to know you a little better. We'll talk about your goals and set a plan to achieve them."

Miranda's hand shot up in the air.

"Do we get to know about you?"

I could tell half the girls in the class were holding their breaths. I wouldn't have admitted it to another soul, but I was holding my breath too.

Mr. Hart graced the class with another winning smile. "Sure, we can take a few minutes."

Miranda's hand was up again. "How old are you?" She asked boldly.

"Twenty-six."

Another girl's hand shot up. This time, it was the girl with the pink hair.

"Where did you go to school?"

"UC Davis."

UC Davis? My heart was caught in my throat. That was just under two hours from Napa.

It didn't make sense. None of it did. Was this fate or some kind of sick joke? It could also be a coincidence, but Emma would have said otherwise. I could see her in my head, wagging her finger, smiling mischievously, telling me to learn to dream. I shut her out of my mind.

The questions began coming all at once.

"How tall are you?"

"Six and a half feet."

"Are you married?"

"No."

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

Mr. Hart laughed. "These are very personal questions," he told Miranda. She smiled sweetly, the little slag.

"I thought you said we could get to know you."

Miranda really was relentless. I could tell from the longing look in her stupid, soulless eyes that she wanted him. An untouchable man was an especially tempting challenge for her.

I fantasized Miranda spontaneously combusting into a pile of ash. The thought made me feel both smug and insane.

Mr. Hart cleared the whiteboard and told us to complete assignments 5-12. That's all this program was about — workbooks, lots and lots of workbooks, covering everything from algebra to reading comprehension. I'd heard somewhere it was about the same difficulty level as the GED test. It was so pathetically easy that I wondered why I wasn't just dropping out to get my GED instead, but then I remember that I've already done enough to break my mother's heart.

I was just about to pick up my pencil when I saw Mr. Hart making his way to the back, his eyes on me.

"You," he said. "Miss Ten-Minutes-Tardy. You're first."

He picked a seat beside me. We were seated two rows behind the nearest student. There was the soft murmur of voices and the scratches of pencils and pens. It created a small bubble atmosphere and gave us a sense of privacy. I wanted this moment to be just us, me and Mr. Hart — Gabe.

I looked at him, sitting on the edge of one of the small student desks; it made him look even bigger than he already was. His hazel eyes were more green than brown today.

"You missed roll call so I'm gonna take a wild guess here. Miss Craft?"

"Lucky guess," I said, hoping I didn't sound as nervous as I felt.

I nearly jumped out of my seat when he reached over and picked up my purple journal from the side of my desk.

"No," I said, instinctively reaching for it. That was private.

"Nothing inappropriate, right?" He held it up out of reach, his eyes light. Was he teasing me?

"It's just—nothing." That was kind of true. It wasn't really anything special, but I still didn't feel comfortable with anyone —much less him— reading it.

"Mind if I look through it?"

"Stop avoiding human interaction," Emma said at the party, drink in hand. "You have to let people in or you'll disappear. Take a chance, Gracie."

"Okay." I was saying it more to Emma than him, but that was all the permission he needed.

"You write a lot?" He asked absently. I wasn't sure if he really cared for my answer. He was already flipping through the pages. Intimate thoughts, silly ideas, random combinations of sentences that had seemed interesting enough to jot down.

"You dream of yellow, I dream of blue. I see the sky when I look at you. The love is fleeting, the heart is still. If you asked me to love, I'd say I will," he read quietly so the other students wouldn't hear.

He glanced at me curiously and I blushed. This was the single most humiliating thing that had ever and would ever happen to me.

"You wrote this?"

"Yes," I said, mortified. Thanks, Emma. Now I can never show my face here again.

"This," he said, his eyes scanning quickly. "This is my favorite. This one: 'I am the sun that burns too hot, you are the flower, the forget-me-not. We bloomed unequal, worlds apart. But I give you my all, my love, my heart.'"

I wrote all of these cheesy poems for Emma because she loved anything and everything to do with romance. Her absence hit me like a punch in the gut. It was so sudden and swift that I couldn't breathe for a moment. I thought about her all the time, but sometimes the finality of losing her just kind of catches up to reality. She's gone. She's really gone.

My vision was blurry when I felt a warm hand cover mine. It was there for only a fraction of a second, gone so quickly that I could have imagined it.

"I didn't meant to upset you," Mr. Hart said softly. He placed my notebook back on my desk, looking guilty, like it was his fault I was falling apart. It wasn't — I wanted to tell him that, but I didn't know how.

"I'm not upset. Just humiliated." That much, at least, was true.

He gave me such a heartbreakingly beautiful smile. "You're humiliated? Grace, why?"

I wanted to hear him say my name a thousand times. Grace. Grace. Grace. I memorized it in my head, the sound of his voice, saving it like a present to unwrap every night before I fell asleep. Butterflies flickered in my belly as warmth spread to every part of my body, right up to my fingertips. I wondered how I could be so attracted to someone while buried so deep in my grief.

I had to get it together, to soldier on and come out of this with my dignity still intact.

"Are you kidding? They're hella lame," I said. "I wrote those poems for my sister. She loved cheesy shit—er, cheesy stuff like this."

He looked unaffected by my slip up. Maybe he hadn't heard it.

"What does your sister think about these poems?"

"I don't know. She never got to read these," I said. " She died a few months ago."

I'd never really said that out loud before. Gone, yes. I could accept that. Death had too much finality to it, and I wasn't ready to process that yet. Still, somehow, I'd said it.

Mr. Hart let out a deep sigh and ran a hand through his hair. He looked so good doing it that my stomach clenched in pleasure.

"Grace, I'm—"

"It's okay. I'm okay."

My ears were ringing. So much for keeping my dignity intact. I felt like such a pathetic loser, just dropping my sob story on him like that.

"Look, I shouldn't have read your journal. I'm sorry. I was out of line."

"No, it's fine. At least someone got to read it." I really was starting to feel okay. It was done with. I couldn't take it back. I could survive this humiliation. I'd survived a lot worse.

He ran a hand through his hair again, his fingers smoothing back a stubborn lock of hair that just kind of kept flopping back down on the side of his face. I was starting to suspect that he was feeling worse about this than I was.

"I really screwed this up, didn't I?" God, he sounded like such a kid right then. Like I'd caught him with his hand in the cookie jar or something. It was kind of adorable.

"I mean, you were just being inquisitive," I offered.

"That's a very nice way of saying I was being nosy." I swear, I don't think I've ever seen a grown man look so ashamed of himself. I wished there was a way I could have comforted him, but nothing appropriate came to mind. He was my teacher. I couldn't very well get up and hug him right there in front of the whole class. He'd probably find it creepy anyway.

"Really, it's fine," I said. "Do you mind if I go to the bathroom?"

I think he knew I was trying to spare him from this agonizingly awkward conversation. I was probably going to spend the rest of my life dissecting and analyzing everything I'd said to him. I didn't have to wonder about what I could have done differently because I already knew that I just should have never brought up Emma. She'd been like poison seeping into our words, ruining everything.

And I hated myself for it. I hated that I felt that way, that I was insulting her memory like that. I needed time to... process.

"Sure," he said. "Take your time."

---

The girl's bathroom followed a dull theme of light green, making me feel a little nauseous. I splashed cold water on my face, taking deep breaths. When I looked into the mirror I saw the ghost of a girl who had died a long time ago.

I saw myself.

My face was gaunt, all of my features sunken in. My blue eyes, once my best feature, were the only things that seemed to stand out now, as if I was all eyes, all vacant and lifeless. There was nothing else to look at - I was already disappearing. I'm all bones and baggage now, made up of shadows and secrets and nothing, nothing at all.

I wanted to break every mirror in the bathroom. Every time I see myself I see Emma too, and I wonder if I'm going to be punished like this for the rest of my life. I will always see her looking back at me, doe-eyed and curious, never judging but always watching, reminding me again and again that it was my fault she was gone.

"Please," I said to nobody. "Please make it stop."

I locked myself into a stall to get away from my reflection - or was it her reflection? I put my head in my hands, my fingernails digging into my face, wanting to scream but not having the nerve to do it.

I was losing my mind. Maybe I've lost it already.

Some time passed, but I couldn't tell you how much. I just let myself slip away from reality for a bit.

The sound of the restroom door swishing open made me jump, startling me out of my mad, mad thoughts. A familiar pair of black leather shoes came to stop outside of my stall.

"Grace?"

Time slowed. My skin burned. My voice was shaky when I spoke.

"Please go," I said. I wasn't sure if I really wanted him to, but I said it anyways.

"Class is over. Come out when you're ready. I'll wait for you right here."

He was so freakishly tall that I could see his head. I knew all he'd have to do is raise his head a little and he'd see me bent over on a toilet seat, miserable and pathetic. I got up slowly and opened the stall door.

He was facing away from me in what I presumed to be an effort to give me some privacy, but his eyes met mine when I looked in the reflection of the mirror. I saw myself too, standing over a foot and a half shorter than him, skinny and frail. I avoided looking at my face.

"I'm sorry I didn't come back." I tried to hold his gaze, but his eyes were too intense. I looked down at the tiled floor.

He paused then said, "I wasn't expecting you to."

"It won't happen again."

He looked skeptical. "Do you want me to call your parents?" It wasn't a threat, just something that teachers said when you weren't feeling well.

"No — don't."

"Alright, I won't," he said, and I knew that he wouldn't.

"Thanks," was all I could manage.

"This place hasn't changed," he said, looking around. "The boy's restroom is identical," he added hastily.

"You went to school here?"

He grinned. "Unfortunately."

"But you went to UC Davis," I said accusingly.

"For college, yes," he clarified, and made his way to the door to hold it open for me. "But I grew up here."

It made sense. Why else would he come here to teach? I felt like an idiot for not having considered it before.

I stepped into the empty hall, feeling a little chilly without my coat. I'd left it in the classroom. I turned to look at Mr. Hart. "Why'd you come back?"

He put his hands deep into his pockets, something that I began to notice was a habit of his. "It was time. Why'd you move here?"

I groaned. "Is it that obvious?"

He shook his head. "Eileen—I guess you'd know her as Mrs. White—left notes about all the students for me. You and I could have been neighbors in California," he said, grinning. We both knew that was bullshit so I laughed, actually laughed.

"My grandparents live here," I said, answering his question. "My mom and I moved here in August. Fresh start, I guess."

He held the door open to his classroom and followed in behind me.

"I'm not allowed to let you take home your workbook, but you're welcome to come in early tomorrow if you want to catch up," he said. "I can meet you here at seven-thirty."

That was incredibly nice of him.

"I'll be there."

He smiled. God, he was so beautiful. I stared shamelessly at him. He shouldn't have become a teacher. Temptation was going to come knocking at his door, hordes of teenage girls begging to be noticed, to be loved, to be fucked. And I was right there with them.

I wanted him. I guess that was another form of madness.

"It gets better, Grace," he said softly. "The way you're feeling now, someday it'll change."

My heart stopped. It was a moment before I realized he was talking about Emma. I felt guilty that I'd let those dreamy eyes distract me from the real reason for my existence now — to be punished to a life of self-loathing.

I should have never been driving. I should have never run that red light. I should have been the one to die.

It should have been me.

"Hey, it's okay," Mr. Hart said softly, taking me gently by the arm. I was glad for it, glad because if he hadn't done it I was afraid I could have floated away, disappeared. In that moment, the only thing that tethered me to the earth were his fingers curled around my elbow.

"I'm okay," I said, even though I wasn't.

My heart was thumping erratically in my chest. He was standing so close, too close. I could have counted his eyelashes, a little long and curly for a man, but they suited him. His features all seemed mismatched; eyes slightly slanted in an almond shape, nose a little too straight for his face, cheeks deep, hollowed, and a strong, but narrow jaw. None of it should have worked together, but he somehow owned it. He didn't have the kind of appeal you'd find on the cover of GQ magazine. It was the unconventional kind, the kind you'd only really appreciate if you took a good look at him.